Lovers and Martyrs
by LeaderLoverLost
Summary: Where have they gone? That's what everyone's asking. AU.


**AN: A(nother) darker take on life, post ROTJ. I've been thinking about writing something where they all have flashbacks and such to the war after everything they've seen. It's on my to do list. I'm not really sure where this came from but here it is. **

**Disclaimer: Do I look like I own Star Wars? Or Rise Against? (Although you can't own people because that's slavery...)**

**And just one more note; The "Where have they gone?" quote from Audience of One came up while I was writing and listening to that song. Because of it the original title was Where Have They Gone.**

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"Where have they gone?" Audience of One – Rise Against

They were good people.

Great friends.

Lovers.

Always up for a drink or two with the rest of the gang.

I guess there was always something else going on.

There was always something hidden from view.

They have a name for it now.

Post traumatic stress disorder.

PTSD.

It should have been studied before.

It might have saved her, if not him.

She might not have done it had someone other than him known she wasn't good. Someone could have kept a better eye on her, maybe even stopped her.

To everyone else, even _us_, they were fine, excellent, the perfect couple. But that was from the outside looking in.

Yeah she hadn't been suicidal since about a year after Yavin but that didn't mean she was completely healed. He knew that. He kept an eye on her, got her through the night when the nightmares got to her.

Looking back I wonder whose idea it was to make her Chief of State.

They were in love but some rule or something prevented them from being officially married. They didn't care.

In their words "We don't need a piece of flimsy to tell us we love each other."

Unfortunately most of the public was oblivious to the fact that they were a permanent "item".

The last time we saw the both of them we all went out for drinks. He was going away for a few days to help with something on some random mid-rim planet.

They were happy.

But it would not last.

While away he got caught in a small skirmish with some Stormtroopers. He saw a woman lying in the street, thought it was Leia and panicked. But instead of going to the woman he did what we all do. He froze.

I'm sure he knew that it wasn't her but in that typical post war fashion, he wonder _what if it was her?_

That split second cost him his life.

When she got the news she was in her office.

Everyone wonder why the 26 year old Chief of State put a blaster to her head and spattered the view port behind her in blood.

The poor window washer who found her thought it was red paint on the window. So, high up, on his window washer scaffolding he scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. Until he realized it was on the inside. And standing there, peering through the glass, he saw her.

The window washer quit his job and we hear the poor man is somewhere in the outer-rim, drowning in a glass.

As for the rest of us…well, we move on, but we don't forget.

Sometimes I'm convinced I can see them out of the corner of my eye. His arm around her shoulders, her eyes sparkling as she laughs at something he whispered in her ear.

The doctors say it's probably an effect of PTSD and that I should be tested.

I'm not going to get tested, none of us are, we're not letting them give us some meds and say 'if you take them it'll be all better.' Han and Leia never had a chance to 'get better' so why should we?

I know how she looked in those last moments of her life. Her face would have been tear streaked as she cried, a flimsy telling of his death crumpled in her hand along with a flimsy holo of them, a copy of the one that was found in his pocket after his death, a pain in her eyes so deep and unbelievable that none of us will ever be able to understand it.

Her desk still sits in the corner of the Chief of State's office where it was when she was alive. No one who's held the position since has had the heart to do anything but clean it. They keep their own desks separate. No one sits at hers out of respect.

And they say you get the most dreadful feeling if you stand where she was standing in the final seconds that took her from us. A cold, empty, shattered, loneliness that's indescribable until you've experienced it.

It's been 10 years since I've been in that office but I'd say that perfume that Han gave her, the one that was light and beautiful and not at all overwhelming, still lingers.

…F…I…N…I…S…H…


End file.
